Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262765AbUJ0WzC (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Oct 2004 18:55:02 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262757AbUJ0Wqk (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Oct 2004 18:46:40 -0400 Received: from mail.dif.dk ([193.138.115.101]:31671 "EHLO mail.dif.dk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262765AbUJ0Wnn (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Oct 2004 18:43:43 -0400 Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 00:52:01 +0200 (CEST) From: Jesper Juhl To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Dave Airlie , Linux Kernel Mailing Lists Subject: Re: The naming wars continue... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <4179F81A.4010601@yahoo.com.au> <417D7089.3070208@tmr.com> <20041027200805.GA17759@4t2.com> <21d7e997041027141358b05c41@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2947 Lines: 62 On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > On Thu, 28 Oct 2004, Dave Airlie wrote: > > > > There has been a fair bit of bike shedding going on... so I think we > > should use some sort of timber and paint it red... > > Ok, I nominate this for the strangest entry in the discussion so far. > Heh, yeah, glad I'm not the only one incapable of making sense of that. :) Anyway, I've been reading this thread and just want to add my own small comments to it : Personally I was a bit sceptical of the "new development model" at first, but as 2.6.x has progressed I've come to like it very much. I'm using 2.6 on a number of boxes, servers, workstations at work and my personal machine at work, and my impression is that it's the fastest kernel we've had so far, and it's stable (at least I've not had any major issues). So to me it seems to be working just fine. Some people have been asking for a sepperate tree for all the experimental and unstable stuff, but as I see it that role is fulfilled by Andrews -mm tree. Things go into -mm, then get a bit (or a lot in some cases) workout and then slowly migrate into the mainline (Linus) tree as they settle down and are proven to be stable. This is good since it keeps the stable kernel up-to-date feature wise, and stuff has a place to get fixed and stabilized before it moves to mainline, so mainline 2.6 is not a minefield of unstable changes (and I think Andrew is doing a very good job at this), but it's not a hugely out-of-date thing as it used to be with a sepperate 2..x development tree. The people asking for a very stable 2.6.x.y.z.whatever tree are forgetting a few things in my oppinion; First they seem to forget that point releases actually serve the role of "new and improved stable kernel", so 2.6.x is the new "maintainance release" of the 2.6.x-1 kernel. Also they forget that there's a period of -rc releases before a point release where stability and incompatibility problems can be dealt with. They also forget that there's nothing stopping them from forking off 2.6.x at any point in time and maintaining their own "ultra stable" kernel based on that release (hopefully they would still merge their fixes into whatever is the current Linus kernel). I'm starting to ramble, all I really want to say is that I think the current model works well - changes get testing in -mm before hitting mainline, and mainline is not lacking behind in fixes and features as badly as we've seen earlier with 2.4.x vs 2.5.x, 2.3.x vs 2.2.x and previous development branches. And I think Andrew, Linus and the other main kernel people are doing a very good job with the kernel atm. -- Jesper Juhl - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/